New ways of ensuring Israel’s compliance with int’l law needed, says UN commission

Occupied Palestine (QNN)- The United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory urged on Monday the global community to urgently explore new ways of ensuring Israel’s compliance with international law.

Addressing the Human Rights Council with the commission’s first report on the occupied Palestinian territories and ‘Israel’, former UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay said, “Given a clear refusal by Israel to take concrete measures to implement the findings and recommendations of past commissions, the international community must urgently explore new ways of ensuring compliance with international law.”

“It is our strong view too that the continued occupation of the Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem and Gaza, the 15-year blockade of Gaza, and longstanding discrimination within Israel are all linked and cannot be looked at in isolation,” she added.

She also noted that the international community had failed to take meaningful measures to ensure Israel’s compliance with international law and influence it to bring an end to the occupation.

“Threats of forced displacement, demolitions, settlement construction and expansion, settler violence and the blockade of Gaza have all contributed to and will continue to contribute to cycles of violence,” said Pillay.

She said the reality enduring for decades brings a general sense of despair and hopelessness within the Palestinian population in Palestine, ‘Israel’ and the diaspora.

“They are left without hope of a better future that affords them their full range of human rights, without discrimination.”